When some people die, a whole world mourns their passing – the loss is sorely felt by family, community and friends. But other deaths are more anonymous. In the Great War, thousands perished almost unnoticed, lives cut short almost before they had begun.

William Riley was an orphan. His parents died of tuberculosis when he was very young. William was separated from his two sisters and they would never meet again. He was sent to the Burwood Boys’ Home, an institution pledged to rescue ‘destitute or uncared for’ boys from ‘depraved immoral or other dangerous surroundings’.1 William was taught the rudiments of reading and writing, schooled in scripture and gardening, then told he must make his own way in the world.2

Within weeks of his eighteenth birthday, William joined the Army. Perhaps it was patriotism, perhaps the chance of earning a living, perhaps there was nowhere else to go. William served fourteen months with the 60th Battalion, and we will never know what kind of a family they became to him. He fell ill within weeks of arriving in France, was shipped away to England and died.

William Riley’s personal effects made a pathetic little bundle: a pen and a notebook, a French coin and pocketknife, some cigarettes and a Bible, the usual assortment of socks, comb, handkerchief and scarf. But Base Records had no next-of-kin to send them to. They were wrapped up in brown paper, bound with string and forwarded to the Boys’ Home in Burwood. William had also kept two letters. There is no record of who they were from. Perhaps it was his guardian appointed at the orphanage, perhaps the nurse who cared for him through sickness, perhaps one or even both of his sisters had learned of his service overseas.

More than likely, these letters were written by a stranger. William’s name was probably chosen at random by one of a dozen patriotic societies working to ‘keep up morale’. Women, young and old, sent off parcels of comforts and wrote cheery correspondence to men they would most likely never meet.

In the 1920s, there was no one to choose William Riley’s epitaph. His grave reads like a roll call, noting his rank, battalion and age. Nor was there anyone to receive his medals, medallions or memorial scroll issued by a ‘grateful King’. Those trinkets of condolence were mass produced in England and issued to grieving families across the Empire, honouring around one million dead.

Trinkets of condolence: The memorial broach issued to mothers on the death of their sons. In William’s case the memorialisation process is underscored by absence. His mother died over a decade before him. A memorial broach for her was never made. Snape family memorial broach courtesy Walter Barber.

Even so, it would be wrong to claim that William had no one. A Miss Halligan from Ballarat wrote for details of his death. Perhaps she also wrote the letters William Riley had kept. William left what little money he had to her, and the nurse who showed some little kindness to a sick and vulnerable child. The pay still due to him from the Army was bequeathed to the orphanage, the only ‘real’ home William had known. In time the orphanage also received his medals, pledging to care for them in the absence of any relative the military authorities could find. Interestingly, William used the term ‘Burboys’ in addressing the Home. Perhaps that familiar abbreviation was even a term of endearment.3

Today, still, that orphaned soldier boy is remembered. Mrs Betty Horskins of Glen Waverley chanced on the lad’s story in her research and it is William she remembers each Remembrance Day:

How sad, a young man who belonged to no one. To have not a soul that was family . . . There being no loved ones to accept his medals . . . the authorities asked if the Boys’ Home would accept them. The Committee agreed – I wonder where the medals are now. Fancy fighting and dying then what little you owned and what you were entitled to ends up with a committee.4

Smart lads: A few of the ‘orphaned’, ‘destitute’ or simply ‘uncontrollable’ boys sent to Burwood. The home ‘for the rescue and training of boys’ was situated in ‘fine, healthy country’ a few miles (then) from the metropolis of Melbourne. These boys were institutionalised at around the same time that William was, trained ‘to be of use in garden or on farm’ and taught to become a ‘wage-earner’. Perhaps the Army promised William a more regular or remunerative occupation, or perhaps it was just the promise of adventure. The Spectator, 23 June 1899.

Mrs Horskins became a kind of fictive kin for a boy without a family, one of countless thousands who endured ‘the awful events’ of the Great War. But no one knows the answer to her question about the medals. Burwood Boys’ Home was disestablished in 1972. The mementos it had pledged to ‘preserve in a suitable manner’ have vanished without trace.5 So too, in a sense, has William Riley. A young man, of whom nothing is left bar the official record, ‘a lost soul’ Betty Horskins has adopted as her own.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This account draws on William Riley’s service dossier NAA: B2455 RILEY WILLIAM ERNEST; and contemporary newspaper reports. The authors thank Mrs Betty Horskins, Shirley Swain and Kim Wheatley for their help. For further reading on the experiences of soldiers from orphanges see Frank Golding, ‘Making Men of Our Boys: Soldiers from the Ballaret Orphanage in World War 1’ presented at Approaching War: Children’s Culture and the War 1980–1919, UTS, December 2011.

1 Australasian, 20 July 1907.

2 Argus, 1 August 1928.

3 Sworn statement by A. Valentine Soul, Probate Jurisdiction, Supreme Court of Victoria, 2 September 1917, in NAA: B2455, RILEY WILLIAM ERNEST.

4 Betty Horskins to Bruce Scates, 27 August 2014, 100 Stories Archive, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University.

5 R. Campbell Edwards to Base Records, Melbourne, 21 June 1922, in NAA: B2455, RILEY WILLIAM ERNEST.